The Changing Face of Manufacturing: Talent, Technology, and Growth StrategyThe Changing Face of Manufacturing: Talent, Technology, and Growth Strategy

The Changing Face of Manufacturing: Talent, Technology, and Growth Strategy Transcript:

Announcer: You’re listening to The Kula Ring, a podcast made for manufacturing marketers. Here are Carman Pirie and Jeff White. 

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how are you doing, sir?

Carman Pirie: I’m happy to be here per normal. And you? 

Jeff White: Yeah, good to be on the show again, recording and finally, it is, we are Canadians. We have to talk weather, it’s finally cold. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, exactly. This autumn, these cool autumn mornings always, it’s a double-edged sword because you’re always thinking, okay on the one hand, it’s good kind of temperature to go get work done, to do stuff because, saying there’s no beach beckoning you at all, right?

Nobody’s suggesting that you should be out in the sun, but then at the same time, Man, when it’s cold like this in the autumn, I find it pretty easy just to stay in bed. I don’t know about any of the listeners, but it’s kind of hard to get the body going sometimes. But we managed to get, to wake up at least somewhat for this show.

Jeff White: Yeah, I got out of bed and got on the bike and came into work. Refreshed and ready to…

Carman Pirie: That’s enough bragging from you. Thank you. 

Jeff White: But that’s not at all what we’re talking about. 

Carman Pirie: No. If you want to feel refreshed, ladies and gentlemen, get up early in the morning, get on your bike and go to work. But that is not what we’re trying to suggest you ought to do what you ought to do today is listen to our special return guest here at The Kula Ring. 

Jeff White: Yeah. It’s always good to have someone back on the show. Previous guest from November 2021. It’s hard to believe we have this many great folks on the show. And if we’ve been recording for five or six years now but yeah. So joining us today is Liz Shovlin Burnett. Liz is the director of marketing at Mastercam. Welcome to the Kula Ring, Liz. 

Liz Shovlin: Hi guys. Thank you for having me. 

Carman Pirie: Liz, it’s awesome to have you on the show again. Thank you for joining us. Tell our listeners a bit about first off, remind our listeners about you and who you are. Maybe give us a little bit of an idea of who Mastercam is as well. 

Liz Shovlin: Sure. Yeah. So I, again, Liz Shovlin Burnett. I’ve been in marketing for about 15 years or so and have really stuck within the manufacturing space. So I’m happy to be here again. I listened to your podcast and found all kinds of great tips from your other speakers and visitors. In the last two years or so, I’ve changed course from my previous employer that you interviewed me with on the show to Mastercam. The most widely used CAD cam software in the world.

I’m the director of marketing there and I work with a great team. Across the organization to bring Mastercam to more folks around the world. Personally, I have been advocating for seeing more women like me in manufacturing and of course, innovation of manufacturing, I’m really interested in new types of marketing strategies and all types of different technologies and advancements that manufacturers are using today.

Carman Pirie: look at Liz very rarely does a guest set up a transition to the topic quite so well As you just did but you talked about being you know obviously having a keen interest in advancements in technology, etc around marketing and sales and then you also reference your passion to want to see more women involved in manufacturing, more diverse workforce in manufacturing.

And in some ways, what we’re going to talk about today is a little bit of the battle between hiring a person. Not so much a diversity consideration of that, but this notion of, investing in marketing and sales talent, investing in hiring the people versus investments in the technology and platforms and outsourcing talent in order to run the marketing apparatus and Liz, I think you’re bringing a lens of just seeing an awful lot of small and midsize manufacturers in the course of your career kind of struggle with this question. Yeah? 

Liz Shovlin: Yeah, for sure. I’m not sure how often it’s spoken about, but there is a huge issue in manufacturing today, manufacturers, small, medium, large, otherwise. And there’s a major gap in talent. So everyone is struggling to find talent for the shop floor for different positions around the organization.

And that absolutely is seen in the growth engine and a lot of the small to medium size. Manufacturers that I interface with and I think that’s a real challenge that everyone’s trying to solve. 

Jeff White: But it’s not completely it’s not unchanging though. In our conversation leading up to this call, you mentioned you’re recently at one of the largest trade manufacturing trade shows in the world, and they are seeing a huge influx of women in positions within the manufacturing space, eh?

Liz Shovlin: Yeah, absolutely. One of the best ways to fill the gap is to expand your horizons and, of course, bring in training and all of that, but a lot of times women can be overlooked, especially in leadership positions in manufacturing. Recently at IMTS, I think this is an unofficial Statistic that I heard on some of the off-the-floor chat but in prior years so I MTS is every two years. I think it was 2022. They had about nine or 10%. Of attendees were women. And then this year, 2024, I think that statistic had increased to about 30%, which is very exciting to see. More women are filling those roles and helping to lead and grow the organizations, which is what so many of my colleagues and fellow women in manufacturing are trying to do.

Carman Pirie: See, I want to peel back that kind of decision-making a little bit and understand what you’re, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve seen in terms of people struggling with this question. Because on the one hand, you presented as though, just finding people to do the role is very challenging. But then on the other hand, there’s whether or not they’re actually looking for people to do the role versus whether or not they think, technology and maybe outsourcing the function can accomplish it. I guess, which side of that have you found most small and mid-sized manufacturers that you interface with even large ones for that matter? Where do they tend to fall on that preference? Do you tend to find that they’d actually really like to be investing and growing the HR side of it, but they just can’t find the talent or are they much more inclined to lean into the technology and in some ways outsourcing the many of the functions, 

Liz Shovlin: Honestly, I actually see maybe there’s a different path that I really see a lot of the small to medium-sized manufacturers going. A lot of these, especially in the United States. A lot of these small to medium manufacturers started because they had a great idea and maybe they were an engineer or they were a machinist for many years and they saw a path to produce something with a better tool or technology or quicker or cheaper than their competition and they found success with that and that worked for them for a long time but the world has changed a lot and with the advent of AI and a lot of these digital tools especially that we use in marketing I think some of these manufacturers have been left behind one because they’re so busy doing their job and getting product to their customers and helping to keep important industries like aerospace moving forward. But a lot of them are so involved in their businesses that they’re not really focused on figuring out what their problem is related to growth. So once they are aware, Oh, okay. There’s a problem here that I have in my organization. I need to bring in more clients. 

I need to increase revenue, but now how do I do that in this space?

Maybe before COVID, I would go knock on doors and visit other clients give them my card and drop off samples. And that brought me a lot of business, but that doesn’t work anymore. I was just with a manufacturer who said, I can’t even let alone get in the gate, let alone get somebody to have a meeting with me. You know what I mean? If I just call them cold. So he’s investing in a new website and content marketing and all of that. And he’s found the path to outsource that. So I see a lot of. Small to medium manufacturers struggling to identify the problem. And then once they do, they’re struggling with how to solve that. Do I hire somebody? Do I hire somebody who has 25 years of experience knocking on doors, and dropping off samples? Or maybe I work with an agency or a new platform, something like some of these new tools that are available and out there and evolving to help me grow my business through content marketing and public relations and digital marketing and all of that. I think there’s first and foremost difficulty in identifying the real issue at hand. And then when it is it’s difficult to solve that, not to mention run your business. 

Jeff White: That’s an interesting hinge, too, because finding out that you have a problem, is obviously the first step in figuring out how to solve it, but is it typically, do you think that, It’s always about there being an issue, something’s wrong and I have to improve revenue. We need to find more customers. We need to grow our offering geographically or whatever. Or are you seeing that some are also being proactive? 

Liz Shovlin: Yeah, absolutely. And many of these people obviously are very smart people. And they’ve built these businesses over the years and they know that if they do nothing, if they stay the same, they will be left behind. So yes, absolutely. I see a lot of them thinking about, okay, what’s that next step I need to take? And oftentimes it can come from what’s the next type of technology I need to bring into my business so I can expand my customer base. Another huge challenge that Small to medium-sized manufacturers have around the world, but also, especially in the U S is fundraising and getting investors or banks to agree to give them that capital loan so they can purchase the next piece of equipment. That’s going to expand their business and to do that, they need to grow their customer base how do they do that with the solutions they have? Okay. Now we’re thinking about marketing and now we’re thinking about expansion and now we’re thinking about all those things. So absolutely. Yeah. I think a lot of these companies are. Are doing their best to be proactive. One 

Carman Pirie: I guess the one thing that I’ve noticed is in that kind of dynamic, and I can appreciate Jeff’s question about reactive versus proactive. And there’s a little something in the middle of that too. It’s not so much that people are not being proactive or they’re being lazy to Liz’s point, they’re just busy running the rest of the business. So they’re not focusing on it. And I guess, Liz, I wonder, one of the things that I’ve noticed is sometimes when those organizations get around to focusing on it, They have either a requirement or a desire for the time to result, if you will, to maybe be faster than is otherwise realistic, particularly for an organization that hasn’t been marketing all that much.

You take a company that hasn’t invested much in marketing, there’s maybe more prioritized sales investments, and all of a sudden they start to spin up a website and some content marketing. You’re not two months away from ringing the sales bell at that point. You’re, it’s going to take a while. I guess, I’m curious, have you seen that dynamic and how ought they maybe temper or think about patience for marketing results, if you will? 

Liz Shovlin: Absolutely. That’s a huge challenge. I think in every business, right? We always want it yesterday and it takes too long to happen. And we’re pushing for results. Something that I’ve used in the past has been to maybe flip the funnel on its head and focus on catching those customers early on who are ready to buy. Like with your overall marketing strategy, with your content marketing, you need to have content that’s suitable for different stages of the sales cycle.

But what I would say to those small to medium manufacturers who are pushing for results and maybe working with partners or their existing staff or whatever, maybe to start, yes, creating content for all of those different stages, but really front load on finding those customers who are ready to buy. So create comparative pieces of content that show the value of working with your type of technology versus another solving an immediate challenge, working with an AS9100 certified supplier versus not, in order to break into one of the major defence suppliers. All of those things. Those types of things can help. And then it, or if you’re at maybe more of a medium-sized manufacturer and you’re in a marketing role that can help create buy in your organization to get more investment toward your marketing engine. 

Jeff White: One of the things that we’re covering here is this notion that sometimes you can leverage technology more than people. And I guess I’m wondering, where if you are one of those smaller and medium-sized manufacturers, and you haven’t necessarily been able to find the appropriate people or outsource things like that, what. What technologies do you think are going to have the greatest impact on a business like that in terms of investing in marketing and sales technology? Is there, is it all about AI, or is it more automation? What are we talking about there? 

Liz Shovlin: Yeah, that’s a tricky question. Every business is so different, but I feel like if you don’t have the foundation in place, moving to a chat GPT to create all of your blog posts or social media posts is going to be for not because you don’t have the basic foundations in place. So to me, I would say developing. That digital experience for your customer would be the best place to start if we’re going to speak in, generalities and say, okay, for everybody, here’s what we should do. I would say, yeah, get that strong website in place. Make sure you have all of your social properties at least reserved and maybe start to think about some of the basics like creating, content and different types of sales tools for your sales team to use. If you have one or for you to use, if you’re the sole sales and marketing and, making engine at your organization, putting those things in place, and maybe then take the step towards something like a HubSpot or a Pardot or something like this to begin to do some of the work for you, maybe while you’re visiting with the client, you’re also connecting with 50 or 60 other clients by sending an email newsletter that has your latest blog posts that are geared toward some of your most high dollar value prospects. I would say so probably starting at the basics and then taking those small incremental steps to integrate what technology you can. Would probably be where I would go. 

Carman Pirie: I wonder it seems to me, I think as that question started, that in Jeffers talk about leveraging AI and things of that sort even, and then, we talk about the advice being I’m not gonna say basic, that wouldn’t be accurate. It’s more just, that, that playbook has been a bit of that, that playbook isn’t brand new. It’s certainly not even five years old. It’s older than that. And I wonder. It feels to me like we might be at a kind of an interesting time in marketing where, you know, for a little while enterprises were at a certain scale and smaller organizations could play at a certain scale and, a lot of the same tools were being used, a lot of the same technologies were at play. In some ways, you’d think AI would be a bit of a leveller of that playing field, but then on the other hand, I think maybe it’s the enterprise organizations that can really afford and have the bandwidth to experiment with it. That kind of small to mid-size manufacturer that you just articulated that’s, depending on some marketing automation to get some email newsletters out as they’re out making a few sales calls. It’s hard for them to imagine, it’s hard to imagine how they can carve off the time to invest in experimenting with marketing AI, right? 

Liz Shovlin: Yeah, absolutely. They have so many other things to do. One of the biggest challenges that I hear about obviously is the talent shortage. So if they do have the work, they have difficulty making it. Or if they do need to generate new business, they have difficulty in finding the talent to help them do and of course, like we haven’t talked at all about the supply chain challenges. There are so many that these manufacturers are dealing with. And then, they’re also struggling with how to raise funds. How do I bring in my next piece of equipment? And the large manufacturers are just far and above that. And they have these engines that run. I do think there is a silver lining for the small, especially medium-sized. Manufacturers who are more agile and have the ability to be more agile. So if they take the time to invest in a strong strategy, be very specific with the type of business market segment that they’re trying to penetrate. And really, I think to work with either, an agency or bring in a one-man show who’s a jack of all trades to run their marketing organization. They can be very agile and they can. Leverage these new tools, AI, and all of that to create content and be very specific and guided and much more flexible than the larger enterprises. The larger enterprises, they’re slow. They have a lot more money and they’re buying up the small to medium-sized manufacturers and, and their competition, the markets becoming very consolidated. But I think that’s where the small to medium manufacturers can be really specific, deliberate, and strategic with their overall market strategy. Who is my customer? What is their issue that I am solving with what types of technologies then align their investments there and think about those tools they can win and they can grow steadily? 

Carman Pirie: I think that’s an important message, Liz because it’s really about you’re saying focus can beat funds in some way yeah, the enterprise, companies are very well-resourced, but they also are famously bureaucratic, they find it very hard to take decisions, they find it hard to move fast I think that’s an important note that the kind of the Liz. If you’re willing to go very niche and to be very laser-focused as a small to midsize manufacturer, there are still lots of there’s lots of wins to be had. 

Liz Shovlin: Yeah, absolutely. And those large, especially defence and. Medical organizations reward small businesses and they want to work with women-owned companies and all of that. So there is an avenue and there is a structure in place to help continue to incentivize that around the world. But a lot of the larger organizations. Also, don’t put the customer first. The customer has a really unique type of problem that they’d like to solve and they want to be innovative with their technology and they’d like a partner to help them do that.

The large company very well may say no, right? Because it’s a one-off opportunity in their eyes and they’re not going to be flexible enough to help that customer move forward and that’s a great spot for the small to medium-sized. Manufacturers to target with their marketing strategy. 

Jeff White: Speaking of targeting, where do you think if some of these small to medium-sized manufacturers want to bring on talent, specifically more diverse talent, where do you think they should be looking? Should they be, you mentioned earlier, somebody with 25 years experience and kind of scouring LinkedIn for this person or, are there, Colleges and other places where really interested and excited young people that, that are looking to get into these kinds of roles are coming out of school and looking for this kind of thing. Or do you think, yeah, I guess I’m just wondering where are the people that you know, that, that might be able to fill these roles and how should we be going about finding them? 

Liz Shovlin: Yeah. It’s such a challenging question for so many manufacturers. It’s the first and foremost thing that they’re struggling with. But I do see the companies that are working with their local community and working with the high school and the local technology centers, the colleges, and workforce development organizations to put in place special training and apprenticeship programs and find talent. It’s an investment. You’re going to have to also train at the same time. And I have seen a lot more of the small to medium manufacturers, especially since COVID be a lot more flexible with remote employees, obviously not in the shop for, right? It’s not going to work out. But for marketing or for sales to work with an individual who’s maybe closer to the client or who has a very specific skill set or experience. Maybe if you’re very specialized in Swiss machined parts, you want to find somebody who has that experience and they’re located across The United States. Meet with them, put in place a safe contract and protect all parties, but give it a try and see what you can do to work with some of those other avenues and options, but the training, working locally, and this is something that government and industry need to focus on as well as getting the investment down into the community at the local level to drive the training.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And certainly work that’s needed. I think that your comment about manufacturers being kind of opening their minds to hiring remotely, especially for those marketing roles, makes total sense to me. On the one hand, a good number of those manufacturers are because of factory floor dynamics. They’re a little bit more used to managing people. They can see and manage functions they can get their hands on if you will. Remote salespeople often, I think, maybe offering a bit of an easier isn’t the right way, but at least more black or white style of performance management, right? Whether or not they’re making their quota is the one question you have. Look at this marketing function. It’s going to take a bit of a change of pace to say, that not only do we need to open our minds to remote work and invest in marketing that we haven’t invested in before, but now we need to manage these people in a different way as well. That’s why I think it’s the right solution, Liz, but I do think it’s a tall order too. 

Liz Shovlin: It is, it’s a shift and it’s a risk. Just starting and just trying to begin and making mistakes and, starting with projects rather than giving the keys to the whole system and strategy to somebody else can help, but also small to medium manufacturers need to invest in networking and creating an environment so that they as the business owner or leader and the department can spend time networking. And working with other organizations like them or similar, at least to them that can make recommendations. So now you have a, maybe a remote agency or individual that comes highly recommended by somebody you trust. And it makes it a lot easier. 

Carman Pirie: I guess as we bring this episode to a close, I’d like to I’ll lead the witness a little bit, Liz, one of the things that I’ve always found is, I think it’s easy for organizations to in some ways over emphasize or over depending on the one, and I’ll use the term in a non-gendered specific way, but the one guy, like the one person who they think can do all of the marketing. And I’ve almost never seen that work. It can often be very hard to find that one person. And if you actually do find the unicorn you can find it very hard to keep the unicorn. Have you encountered that dynamic? And I guess, If so how might you recommend manufacturers think about it differently to avoid that challenge?

Liz Shovlin: Yeah, it is a challenge, right? There is very rarely a unicorn to be found, as you say, and there’s rarely that one guy or girl who can do it all, but you might be able to find someone who can organize it all or coordinate it all. So bringing in that person, understanding that they can’t individually do everything. You need to also allocate a budget for that person to utilize, to be able to work with an expert to execute and bring the growth that you’re looking for. 

Carman Pirie: I think there’s a whole lot of one-person marketing departments right now that are going to clip that recording, Liz, and just send it around to the organization.

Jeff White: They’re nodding furiously. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I think you’re spot on though. It’s one person to oversee and manage the budget and to manage outside partners and whatnot. That’s a role. There’s not a lot of extra for them to be doing at that point. They’re going to have their hands full. Yeah. Provided it’s resourced appropriately and they actually have a budget to work 

Jeff White: with right that second part is pretty important. 

Carman Pirie: Absolutely. Absolutely. Liz, we started this episode by talking about how it was getting cold and I’m lazy and I don’t like getting out of bed. But it’s cold and I’m lazy because we’re nearing the end of 2024 and we’re turning the corner towards 2025. I’d be curious, what are you most excited about as a marketer as we look at 2025? 

Liz Shovlin: For the year ahead, I think there’s so much to do in the space of diversification. But I like to think about things. For me, maybe I have, I don’t know, maybe I have a little bit of ADHD or something. But when I think about that, I think about, wow, it’s so great to see so many more women coming into the field. For example, I was so energized. Hearing that at IMTS and excited that there were more women popping into the field. And then I thought, wow, what about diversification of solutions? And there’s so much to do relative to sustainability and, ensuring that we’re creating solutions, that manufacturers become more innovative and solve many more challenges around the world. But I guess the cool thing about the current age and what we’re doing is all of these topics and subjects. This can be addressed if we just leverage the tools that we have today. So there are so many different solutions out there. So many innovative tools that are popping up left and right and solutions integrating AI and all of this that you can really. Speak to all of these different challenges that maybe your customers or you personally are interested in as I’m speaking about, but you can create the content. You can create the solutions. You can create the tools to address each of those different niche issues that your customers are experiencing. So it’s a cool time to be in marketing because you have the opportunity to leverage all of these different solutions to be able to have a really Engaging and personal conversation with each of your clients without necessarily having to pick up the phone. You should still do that. Absolutely. You should still call your clients and engage with them.

However, you can work with all these different tools and solutions to address these big macro issues, making the space more diverse and ensuring that we’re helping manufacturers innovate to get to, net zero and all of that. But you can also speak to your client who has more of a challenge with just, maybe sourcing a supplier in their own country. It’s just, I think it’s a really neat, interesting time. We’re constantly involved, new tools are coming out, and 2025 I’m sure we’ll continue to see a lot more of that. Of course in software, but also just the different technologies and, Customer platforms that are out there. 

Carman Pirie: I look forward to watching it unfold. And my money is on you, Liz. I think you’ll have a very successful 2025 as well. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. 

Announcer: Thank you guys. 

Carman Pirie: Great to have you on the show. Thanks. 
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Kula Ring with Carman Pirie and Jeff White. Don’t miss a single manufacturing marketing insight. Subscribe now at KulaPartners.com/thekularing. That’s K U L A Partners dot com slash The Kula Ring.